RSS Feed MenuSenator Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) stunning defeat in her state’s GOP primary has left a lot of folks scratching their heads about the outcome and asking questions.
Did she fail to take her opponent seriously?
Why didn’t she go on the attack sooner?
Does Sarah Palin have a collection of Murkowski family voodoo dolls?
Is Joe Miller actually Joe the Plumber in disguise? The list goes on and on.
A more pertinent question is this: What does the Murkowski defeat mean for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee, where she currently serves as the top ranking Republican?
Because Senator Murkowski worked well with ENR Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), some in the media have speculated that her defeat will mean the committee will become more partisan.
That will really depend on who replaces her as the ranking Republican, and how the GOP leadership fills the three other Republican vacancies created by the retirements of Senators Brownback (KS) and Bunning (KY), and the primary defeat of Senator Bennett (UT).
Based on seniority, Senator Richard Burr (NC) is next in line to succeed Murkowski as the top Republican on the ENR Committee. There is little to suggest that Burr would be any less willing to work constructively with Bingaman than Murkowski has.
Burr is more of a traditional conservative who embraces conservation and stewardship. He is not a radical libertarian type that ignores those traditionally conservative obligations.
Senator Burr has shown solid concern for the stewardship of the nation’s public lands and he supports full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). On energy, Burr has been a strong advocate of nuclear energy as a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels. He supports efforts to address nuclear waste issues and to explore utilizing reprocessed nuclear fuel.
One could easily argue that he might be a more constructive force than a senator who hails from a state like Alaska, which is so heavily dependent on revenue from oil development.
The key to having an ENR Committee that can actually advance forward-thinking solutions to our energy and natural resource challenges is for the GOP leadership to fill the vacant spots on the committee with thoughtful, stewardship-minded senators who can work in a bi-partisan manner.
That means not stacking this committee with radical libertarian, anti-public land types and climate change deniers—like the House GOP leadership seems to do with its Natural Resources and Energy and Commerce Committees.
The reason voters are so fickle is because those they send to Washington seem incapable of rising above politics and solving the big problems facing our nation. None of those problems are bigger than energy security and climate stewardship.
The composition of the Senate ENR Committee for the next Congress will likely determine if our elected officials are up to the task.
GEValle // Sep 7, 2010 at 9:41 am
Good.
Let’s hope their replacements are of the “Drill Baby, Drill!” variety, and not the kind of idiots who buy into the global warming hoax or “cap-n-tax”.
Carney // Sep 7, 2010 at 10:43 am
“Drill Baby Drill” = “Die Troops Die”.
Oil funds our enemies, even “domestic” oil, because oil is a fungible, globally traded commodity whose world market is permanently and unfixably controlled by OPEC, which is our enemy. Buying and consuming “domestic” oil takes that oil off the world market, enabling OPEC to charge more for the remaining available oil. The terrorists, nuclear weapons programs, radical madrassas, etc. don’t care whether the funds lavished on them comes from us “directly” (via “foreign” oil purchases) or “indirectly” (via “domestic” oil purchases) – they just like rolling in the dough we provide them one way or another.
OPEC has 78% of world oil reserves and rising while we have 3% and falling (opening up ANWR and offshore just means our percentage falls even faster). The FACTS of geology and geography mean that mule-headedly, mindlessly, stubbornly sticking with oil, just to spite environmentalists, is lavishing hundreds of billions of our money each year on maniacs who are trying to kill as many of us as possible.
The ONLY way out is to break oil’s monopoly on our transportation sector.
Electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt can help, but high up-front costs deter short-sighted buyers unable or unwilling to consider long-term low cost of ownership provided by no or reduced need to buy gasoline.
The most effective way to break free of oil is flex-fuel vehicles that can run not just gasoline but also alternative liquid fuels based on alcohol, such as methanol and ethanol. In contrast with expensive electric motors and batteries, flex fuel capability costs only about $130 per car for automakers to add. The Open Fuel Standards Act (S. 835 and H.R. 1476), backed by stalwart conservatives such as Sen. Sam Brownback, Sen. John Thune, and Rep. Roscoe Bartlett would make flex fuel a standard feature, like seat belts in nearly all new gasoline cars. We MUST end the madness of allowing, year after year, millions of brand new cars to hit the dealership lots that are unnecessarily locked in to ONLY being able to use the one fuel that happens to fund, and be permanently controlled, by enemies that wage war on us.
GEValle // Sep 7, 2010 at 10:51 am
@ Carney:
If you think “Drill, Baby, Drill!”, which would FREE us from the scourge of buying oil from OPEC is equivalent to “Die Troops Die”, then you’re clearly confused.
If you think that “alternative energy” (the Chevy Volt? LOL! It gets 40 miles from a 3-hour charge!) is a viable substitute for oil, gas, and coal, then you’re clearly deluded.
And BTW…Continually raising CAFE standards makes cars more and more unsafe. It’s time to eliminate CAFE standards altogether, and let the market decide what kind of cars we should drive.
Carney // Sep 7, 2010 at 2:51 pm
GEValle, domestic drilling does not, did not, and would NOT free us from the need for OPEC oil. We have 25% of world oil demand and only 3% of world oil reserves. Not only that, but since OPEC is expending its reserves at a lower rate than the non-OPEC producers, each year OPEC has more and more of what’s left, so its share of oil reserves relentlessly rises, while ours drops. By 2020 just the Mideast (excluding Venezuela etc) will have over 80% of reserves, while we’ll have less than 1%, and that’s assuming we leave ANWR and offshore alone – if we don’t our percentage drops even faster.
Even in the short term domestic drilling is a non solution for two reasons: first, our oil is much more complicated to get to (offshore, Arctic) and more expensive to extract and process, than theirs. Thus OPEC can undercut us any time, as it has done in the past, unless we employ the subsides so loudly shrieked about by anti-alternative types. And if you’re going to intervene, why not just do so to get off oil altogether? Secondly, as I carefully explained above, even oil drilled, refined, transported, sold, and used exclusively in America by Americans STILL funds the enemy. This is because oil is a globally traded, fungible commodity (one barrel of oil is the same as another barrel, not counting certain refining that may need to happen). The “pool” of available oil in the world market at any given time is finite, dictated in large part by how much OPEC has decided to produce (really, how much OPEC has decided NOT to produce). Given that finite status, by buying even 100% rah rah American oil, you are withdrawing some of that oil that could be potentially sold on the world market, shrinking the pool of available oil, making the remainder more scarce, and thus enabling our enemies to charge that much more for the oil they sell.
There’s NO escape. Buy your oil from OPEC and enrich it directly, or don’t, and enrich it indirectly. In macro-economic, geo-strategic terms, there is no meaningful distinction between “foreign” and “domestic” oil – it ALL funds the Iranian nuclear program, the Iranian EFP factories, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Saudi-backed fronts (schools, mosques, madrassas, community centers, sat TV channels, websites) that radicalize formerly moderate congregations and communities, the terrorist training camps, the AK-47 and RPG-7 and mortar buys, etc. Every time you swipe your credit card at the gasoline pump, you are funding our enemies.
Alternative energy most certainly IS a viable substitute for petroleum fuel for ground transportation.
Alcohol fuel such as methanol (made from coal, natural gas, or biomass), or ethanol (made from the starchy or sugary portions of various crops) has a vast resource base that no OPEC style cartel can corner, and thus its price cannot be spiked at the whim of a group of 13 state-socialist tyrants.
And drop the adolescent sneering at the Chevy Volt. The vast majority of daily commutes and errands happen within a 40 mile radius of home, making its electric-only range perfectly adequate. Charging up your car in your garage overnight is no big deal to tech-savvy moderns used to changing up their laptops and cell phones overnight as well. And on the relatively rare occasions you do need to drive a long distance, the Volt can recharge its batteries while driving by firing up an internal small standby generator piston engine, enabling it to go over 300 miles before it needs to be refueled (gasoline-only for this year’s model, flex-fuel and thus ethanol compatible, soon).
I do agree with you about CAFE standards. They and the whole fuel-economy mania are the Left’s version of “Drill Baby Drill” stupidity. Both fail to break out of the mental box of oil-only, falsely assuming that oil is the only practical way to get around. Even if we all stuff ourselves into humiliating little econo-boxes and cut our gasoline use 10%, OPEC can just cut production to match, spike the per-unit price sky-high, and make just as much as before on reduced sales volume. As long as we play the rigged game of using oil, the more and longer our enemies benefit.
GEValle // Sep 7, 2010 at 3:30 pm
@ Carney:
First of all, who’s talking “reserves”? I’m talking “potential”.
Just a few months ago, the country was gripped by “the panic” of the oil spill in the Gulf. Millions of barrels were pouring out into the seas, unchecked, and apparently unstoppable. If the BP “disaster” taught us anything, it was that there’s PLENTY of oil in the Gulf. Otherwise, why are Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba currently expanding exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, while we’re sitting on our hands???
A full-scale, domestic drilling program in ANWAR, other parts of Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic shelf, and the Rocky Mountain region (shale oil) would most certainly alleviate us from a significant portion of OPEC’s oil.
And OPEC damn well knows it, too.
In the run-up to the 2008 election, gas prices skyrocketed. However, with the chant of “Drill Baby, Drill” at the Republican national Convention, the price began to plummet. Why?
Simple. OPEC realizes the potential of the untapped oil fields of North America, and they knew that they needed to do whatever was necessary to dampen this sentiment. So they dropped the price of oil.
We need to teach OPEC a valuable lesson: The customer is ALWAYS right. And as a major customer, we demand a better price…Or we’ll take our business elsewhere.
GEValle // Sep 7, 2010 at 3:32 pm
@ Carney:
Please don’t forget the Law of Unintended Consequences in regards to ethanol.
The price of grain will skyrocket. Food prices will explode.
Carney // Sep 7, 2010 at 4:02 pm
GEValle, I’m talking reserves.
Your “lesson” that there is oil in the Gulf of Mexico is no surprise to anyone. What’s relevant, and what you utterly fail to answer, is: how much is there? How much does it cost to extract? What are the risks such extraction poses to the local economy? And will such extraction in any way weaken or de-fund OPEC?
The answers are: almost nothing in comparison to OPEC’s reserves, and to our needs; far more than Saudi extraction costs; huge risks as shown by the devastating damage the Gulf economy has suffered, and in no way whatsoever, because OPEC’s control of the oil market is PERMANENT and UNFIXABLE.
I’m a free-market conservative. I didn’t want this to be true. But once I looked into the facts, I was forced to acknowledge reality. Captain Shale Oil, in tights and boots, is not flying in to save us. Shale oil costs FAR more than even Arctic and offshore oil to extract. It is no threat to OPEC at all.
There’s no where else to take our business, without crippling short-term costs, and a mid-to-long term exhaustion of reserves that places us more at OPEC’s mercy than ever. Re-read this fact: we have 3% of world reserves, and falling. If we tap ANWR, offshore, etc., it will fall even faster. Reality is NOT optional.
As for the tired “food vs. fuel” myth peddled by a UAE-retained DC PR firm, it’s nonsense. We have huge slack capacity in our ag sector. Only half our arable land is farmland and well under half our farmland is even cultivated. We pay farmers NOT to farm because we produce such an overwhelming cornucopia that it threatens to collapse prices to levels so low they’d bankrupt all family farmers. Relentlessly rising per-acre yields and efficiency mean less cropland and manpower each year is needed to feed us, and young people are streaming out of rural areas in search of work. That weans there’s room for massive expansion of cropland and manpower for biofuel without at all hurting food production. Ethanol corn production has gone up several fold, but not at the expense of food corn, which is up too, as well, as is production of other staple crops like soybeans. Even ethanol corn, once the starch is taken out to make fuel, helps feed us, because the remainder, a high-protein byproduct called distillers grain, is used as animal feed for meat livestock, feed that would have needed to be grown anyway. Even more ethanol can be made available from non-terrorist tropical areas like Latin America and the Caribbean, which can make it from sugarcane with very high efficiency. Finally, ethanol is not the only alcohol fuel – methanol which is extremely cheap can be made from natural gas, coal, or any biomass at all, including ethanol corn crop residues, weed plants like kudzu, even trash and sewage.
The real question we should be asking is: why are we still passively allowing millions of cars to enter the marketplace that are locked in to one fuel, Enemy Fuel aka gasoline, only when it costs only $130 to make them omnivores, able to just as easily use methanol and ethanol and thus break oil’s linchpin role and monopoly status?
djenkins // Sep 9, 2010 at 12:09 am
GEValle, I think you misunderstand Carney’s use of the word “reserves.” Oil “reserves” refers to the amount of oil that geologists estimate remains in the ground. So, only 3% of the world’s remaining oil sits under the United States. How on earth does it make sense for our nation to be economically dependent on a resource that we have so little of?
Many geologist actually think the world is nearing something called “peak oil,” which is the point where oil reserves are in permanent decline. If demand does not decline by the same rate, then the price of oil skyrockets and economies that are heavily dependent on it crumble. A recently leaked study by a German military think tank that analyzed how “peak oil” might change the global economy painted a stunningly grim picture. It also concluded that if we have not already reached “peak oil,” we will very soon.
I would go so far as to say that those who choose to ignore the basic realities of oil as a finite resource and the strategic, economic and environmental implications of our nation’s heavy dependence on oil are unpatriotic. They are also so increadibly short-sighted and selfish that they are willing to risk the future of their children and grandchildern so they can do whatever the heck they please today.
There is nothing conservative about that.
Carney // Sep 9, 2010 at 11:30 am
djenkins, thanks. But on “peak oil”, I tend to think that’s a distraction. We’ve had predictions of it ever since the late 19th century, and each doomsday deadline has come and gone.
The main point is, even with no “peak oil” any time soon, it’s already already hair-on-fire urgent to get off oil due to, as you say, the environmental damage it causes, and especially the economic and geo-strategic damage.
djenkins // Sep 9, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Carney, you are correct, the urgency is here now regardless of when we might hit “peak oil.” A measly 3% is not much to hang your hat on.
Still, folks need to recognize that oil (at least in the quanities we are used to) is a finite resource and prudence dictates that we prepare for a world where it is more scarce and much more costly. Some so-called “conservatives” have abandoned the originally conservative notions of conservation and stewardship and apparently think that the free market is not constrained by geologic realities or the laws of supply and demand.